While much attention in the box office world has been on the catastrophic launch of Warner’s “Joker: Folie a Deux,” another new release this past weekend, “White Bird,” has deepened a two-month slump in theaters for distributor Lionsgate.
Beginning with the Eli Roth’s panned video game adaptation “Borderlands” in early August, the last six films from Lionsgate released in over 1,000 theaters each have grossed less than $50 million in the U.S. and Canada and have largely been critical busts. The other films include the actioner “The Killer’s Game” starring Dave Bautista, the horror title “Never Let Go” starring Halle Berry, the long-gestating remake of “The Crow” starring Bill Skarsgård and Francis Ford Coppola’s critically polarizing and audience alienating “Megalopolis.”
Lionsgate’s “White Bird,” a sequel to the inspirational film “Wonder” that hit $315 million worldwide for Lionsgate in 2017, opened last weekend in 1,018 theaters and grossed just $1.58 million. By comparison, “Sam and Colby: The Legends of the Paranormal,” an indie film from a pair of ghost hunter YouTubers, outperformed “White Bird” last weekend with $1.77 million from only 300 Cinemark locations.
This striking run of flops calls for a closer inspection of Lionsgate’s slate and financials. While the studio isn’t completely on the hook for any of these six films due to co-production partnerships, slate financing agreements, foreign pre-sales and acquisition deals, the losing streak isn’t helping Lionsgate’s bottom line in the wake of its spinoff from its parent company earlier this year. And there are looming bumps in the road ahead as TheWrap has learned the true extent of the reshoots on the “John Wick” spinoff “Ballerina,” slated to come out next year.
“The bottom line is the bottom line, and at least one of these movies has to help that bottom line,” said Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock. “I haven’t seen a losing streak like the one Lionsgate is facing in quite some time.”
Lionsgate did not respond to TheWrap’s request for comment by press time.
Early Lionsgate spin-off struggles
In the financial quarter ended on June 30, its first as a standalone company without the streamer Starz, Lionsgate Studios reported a net loss of $44.4 million, more than double its loss of $21.4 from the year-ago period. Revenues were $588.4 million, down 6% from $625 million. Shares of the studios company have dipped 32% this year.
Lionsgate’s string of flops comes as Santa Monica-based Lions Gate Entertainment, which owns 87% of Lionsgate Studios, has seen its shares fall 34% this year. In May, the parent company completed a spin-off of its studio assets to form Lionsgate Studios, whose portfolio includes its film, television and home entertainment divisions, as well as Hasbro’s former Entertainment One (now Lionsgate Canada) and a stake in Steven Spielberg-founded joint venture Amblin Partners.
Despite these struggles, Lionsgate is mitigating losses through several strategies for covering the costs of producing and marketing their films.
Take “Borderlands,” which carried by far the highest budget of Lionsgate’s recent films at a reported $110 million. The Eli Roth-directed film was a co-production with Arad Productions and Picturestart as well as Gearbox Software and 2K Games, the developer and publisher of the video game the movie is based on. Media Capital Partners, which signed a slate-wide financing deal with Lionsgate last June, also pitched in.
Perhaps the most high-profile flop of the bunch, Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” is crashing out after its much-publicized Cannes premiere with just $10 million grossed so far from 10 countries. But Lionsgate only paid a domestic distribution fee for the film, with Coppola agreeing to cover the film’s marketing budget on top of the $120 million production spend he already self-financed through the sale of his wineries.
Lionsgate does have a more favorable slate in 2025, including “Saw XI,” which was delayed from its initial 2024 release but will arrive next year after “Saw X” successfully revitalized interest in the 2000s horror franchise with the return of longtime star Tobin Bell. Sequels to “Dirty Dancing“ and “Now You See Me” are also in the works, as is a new “Hunger Games” prequel called “Sunrise on the Reaping” set for November 2026.
And then there’s “Michael,” Antoine Fuqua’s highly anticipated Michael Jackson biopic that could be one of the highest-grossing films of the year. Lionsgate is co-producing that film alongside GK Films, with Media Capital as co-financiers and Universal handling international distribution.
Will “Ballerina” dance to “John Wick” numbers?
“Ballerina,” a spinoff film for the “John Wick” franchise that’s set for release in June 2025, seeks to expand the 10-year-old assassin universe beyond the titular protagonist played by Keanu Reeves. Set during the events of “John Wick: Chapter 3,” “Ballerina” stars Ana De Armas as a revenge seeker who is trained in a secret ballet school that doubles as an assassin academy. As the film’s trailer teases, Reeves also appears in the film as Wick.
Earlier this year, Lionsgate pushed the “Ballerina” release date a full year. At the time, the spin from Lionsgate was that because of immense anticipation for “Ballerina” among “John Wick” fans, the studio had “opted to ratchet up the action sequences to satisfy expectations.”
Per Lionsgate, Chad Stahelski, who directed the first four “John Wick” films and oversees the franchise along with Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee at Thunder Road, was working closely with “Ballerina” director Len Wiseman on the additional action sequences, “with everyone involved appreciating having the additional time to complete the film.”
But according to three insiders with knowledge of the project, the reality was that Stahelski actually had to reshoot most of the movie due to Wiseman’s cut not passing muster. According to one insider, a significant portion of “Ballerina” was reshot in Prague, with Wiseman not present on set.
The “Ballerina” reshoots took two to three months overseas, according to the first insider, and further delayed development on Stahelski’s revival of “Highlander,” the ’80s fantasy film franchise about a group of immortal warriors who duel each other over centuries.
“Of course Chad had to clean up someone else’s mess. Remember, this film is basically ‘John Wick 3.5,’” said the insider. “This story happens before ‘John Wick 4’ and after that film, they can’t have a failure in anything ‘Wick’ related.”
The insider added: “Chad is going to do ‘Highlander,’ but cleaning up ‘Ballerina’ pushed him by five months for sure.” Henry Cavill, who is attached to headline “Highlander,” took the offer to star in “Voltron” for Amazon MGM on Thursday; it will go into production later this year. A talent agency insider told The Wrap that work is still being done on the “Highlander” script.
While reshoots aren’t always an indication that the final film will be bad, another Lionsgate film that was heavily reworked in post-production was “Borderlands,” which saw “Deadpool” filmmaker Tim Miller handle extensive additional footage.
The road forward
As the recent success of “Saw X” and “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” demonstrated, Lionsgate has had success reviving dormant franchises, and could do so again with “Highlander.” The studio is also sitting on “Freaky Tales,” a “Pulp Fiction”-esque original genre film from filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden that stars Pedro Pascal and premiered to positive reviews at Sundance earlier this year. The eOne film, which Lionsgate gained after the spinoff, remains undated but will be distributed by Lionsgate, an individual with knowledge told TheWrap.
Even with a more favorable slate ahead, the question remains whether Lionsgate can attain the year-to-year consistency that has eluded them for so long. Back in 2019, through a combination of sequels like “Wick 3” and original hits like Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out,” Lionsgate saw its domestic grosses rise to $797 million from just $352 million in 2018.
Keanu Reeves could be the key to Lionsgate’s comeback. Along with his work as John Wick and in Paramount’s upcoming “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” he is set to make his first major comedic role in several years with Lionsgate’s “Good Fortune,” a film directed by Aziz Ansari that sees the “Matrix” star play a socially awkward guardian angel.
Lionsgate has yet to set a release date for “Good Fortune,” though the film did get some free publicity during shooting earlier this year when a picture of Reeves in crutches from an injury he sustained during filming went viral on social media.
“Maybe ‘Good Fortune’ could be that next original hit for Lionsgate,” said Bock. “Every studio needs one on a regular basis. But if it’s got the quality, does Lionsgate know how to market it? Hopefully there’s some lessons learned from the past two months.”
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